Month: July 2019

XSplit back in Las Vegas for EVO 2019

XSplit is back at EVO 2019

The XSplit stream production team is heading back to Las Vegas this year for another round of EVO madness. EVO or Evolution Championship Series – the most prestigious fighting game tournaments in the northern hemisphere (if not, the world)!

Our team will be at the Mandalay Bay from August 2 to 4 for the largest and longest-running fighting game tournament that brings together only the best and finest gamers from around the world. Expect a competitive yet fun atmosphere where fans gather and skilled gamers compete to become the best of the best – champions in their respective games.

In this years’ line up, the final numbers are up! Over 14,000 participants from all over will compete for the honor of being the best in their beloved games, not limited to – Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, Tekken 7, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Mortal Kombat 11, Soul Calibur VI, UNIST, Dragon Ball Fighter Z, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle and Samurai Shodown.

There is no doubt that this year’s competition is going to be really intense! We’ll be sure to have our socials updated for the latest activities and news on the event day itself, so make sure to follow our socials for fresh news from our event correspondents – AJ and Kevin Kim.

Evolution of streaming in the FGC

Since 2011, XSplit has been used for the Evolution Championship Series live stream broadcast. The event was broadcasted to Ustream back in the day reaching over 2 million unique viewers consuming over 1.9 million hours of video content in total. This live stream was produced as collaborative efforts of fighting game sites iPlayWinner, Team Sp00ky, Offcast, and FinestKO.

The growth of the fighting game communities and streaming has expanded through the years, and XSplit has had the honor to be part of and is always in full support of the FGC since the early days. For nearly 10-years, we’ve seen the FGC scene and live streaming expand to greater heights – making our love for fighting games more accessible and appreciated by many audiences across the globe.

If you’re attending EVO, check out the Evolution of streaming in the FGC panel on Friday (August 2) at 2PM – Chris Slight, Maximilian Dood, Spooky and Gooteck will be onsite to discuss more on how live streaming has evolved within the FGC, from individual creators sharing their strategies to tournaments like Evo being broadcast to millions of viewers around the world.

Future Plans for the XSplit Express Video Editor

The new XSplit Express Video Editor is a sign of things to come and a glimpse of the direction we’re moving. It’s a completely free application that allows you to cut and snip video clips you’ve created and export edits within seconds. Its primary objective is speed. The methods in how we do it is quite simple, we’re not rendering. This means you can edit a 4K resolution file and save it out within seconds and without straining your PC’s resources. In case you missed the initial announcement, here’s a quick video about the newest member of the XSplit family.

The original video editor itself has lived as a tool inside of XSplit Broadcaster and Gamecaster since way back in 2014. For the people that managed to find it, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive but the issue was discoverability. The feature was hidden away in a menu with no real indication as to what it does. We saw an opportunity to make it available for free to everyone as its own product which would allow us to do two things; give access to a streamlined video editor to more than just Broadcaster or Gamecaster users such as the OBS Project and put more focus in to the product, providing regular updates and improving usability and features.

Things to come for XSplit Express Video Editor

As you probably already noticed, the application’s initial feature set is identical to the existing video editor inside Broadcaster but with a new lick of paint. However, we’ve been planning out the next steps for the editor that will make it even more awesome and provide functionality that will allow you to produce professional-looking video content quickly.

We will be adding additional audio tracks in the near future as we feel it’s a fundamental feature needed for pretty much anyone creating videos. This will allow you to add music or sound effects to your project with an additional audio track for things like voice-overs. Transitions are another item that’s fairly critical to video editing. Right now the only transition is cut, we plan to add the ability to mix things up by providing extra transition types.

Finally, in terms of our more immediate planned features, we have the larger item of a title editor. Using our experience of building out scene editors and overlay editors, the title editor will be fully featured with a focus on being easy to use but powerful.

That’s just what we can mention now, we’re continually planning out more for the video editor and are excited about where we can take it and how we can fill a void that other editors simply aren’t covering. With that being said, we like to think of the Express Video Editor as a community project and would love to get feedback from you that we can then take and then use to improve. We have a feature vote page where you can make suggestions but we plan on creating a dedicated page for our new video editor.

Do More with your Content with XSplit Video Editor

For nearly 10 years, XSplit has been an essential aid for content creators – whether for video game streaming, content broadcasting or just streaming in general. XSplit Broadcaster, Gamecaster, and the newly released VCam have all played an integral part in today’s streaming lifestyle.

This summer, we’re releasing another app that makes life easier while also allowing you to make the most out of your content. The team is excited to introduce the early access for XSplit Express Video Editor.

XSplit Express Video Editor

A well-loved but rarely utilized feature of both XSplit Broadcaster and Gamecaster, Express Video Editor is a good choice for faster and more efficient editing with a simplified and straightforward interface. Now with this standalone application, you’ll be able to reap the same advantages and some more!

  • Effortlessly cut and stitch clips together, no rendering required
  • Have an upload-ready video in seconds
  • Import recordings from any streaming software at a click of a button
  • Incredibly CPU efficient
  • Completely FREE, no need for a premium license

Gone are the days where you’ll need to use more complicated software to edit your gaming videos. With Express Video Editor, you can stream or record with ANY application of your choice, have it imported seamlessly, edited and/or trimmed, and exported for upload in a span of few minutes without the hassle of learning a complex video editing software.

Availability

XSplit Express Video Editor is on early access and is available at xsplit.com/video-editor. We’d love to hear your feedback so please let us know what you think through the comment section below, our social media channels or by hitting us up on our official Discord channel.

Let’s go and do some more content!

An Easy Way to Make Gaming Videos

Ever fancy making your own gaming videos? Or editing videos for content? These days, you can log into social media and see multitudes of players broadcasting and uploading highlights of their gameplay. How do they do it? Let us teach you a simple way that you can create your own videos.

But wait, a disclaimer before anything! Setting up and prep time will take most of your time, but once you’re set and you’re happy with your setup then its a one-time thing (unless you want to switch things up in the set up). Here’s to setting expectations! Okay, let’s begin.

Choose a game

The initial step to creating awesome content is finding what it is that you’re interested in. If you’re not interested in it, then there’s no point in creating content for it; right?

So, what game are you interested in and would want to broadcast?
Will it be a mobile game, PC or console game?

This step is crucial before doing anything else, make sure that the game you choose to create content on is something that you truly enjoy playing – because the audience can easily tell that you’re merely creating this piece of video for the heck of it. There’s no use of creating content about games that you don’t really care about. Or playing a game for the only reason that it’s mainstream and it can incur views eventually. Pick something that you can play for long hours and truly enjoy the experience. Your future gameplay viewers, potential audiences and future self will thank you for it.

Choose a recording or broadcasting software

Depending on what kind of game or content you’ll be creating, there’ll be some add-ons or accessories that you’ll need to record game footage. If you’ll be creating content on console games, you might need a capture card to get footage on the gameplay and connect it to your software, for XSplit Broadcaster – you can check out the list of compatible capture cards here or if you’re using Gamecaster, check this out. If you have your game on the PC or laptop itself, then it’s only a matter of preparing the scenes. Here is a detailed guide on scenes, once done with setting up the scenes then we can move to the next step. For those looking into creating and editing game highlights after streaming, we highly recommend choosing a software that can simultaneously do local recording whilst broadcasting – you’ll know why in a bit.

Do you need a facecam?

No really, do you need one? For beginner content creators, having a face-camera or webcam might not be a priority on your streams. It’s good to have it eventually so that your audience can see your face and expression during a gameplay session, but as beginners – this can be optional. If you’re at a phase where you feel that adding a facecam is necessary for your set up, you can refer to this blog by our buddy Luis as a guide on how to choose your first face cam. Optimizing your webcam input is also easy with XSplit, here.

Let’s talk about audio

Surely you’d like to add the audio from your game and add, maybe, a microphone for when you’ll be doing commentary on the game from time to time; right? Or for when you do add a Skype or Discord VoIP with your team. We have a few guides available for when you want to
set up the audio and how to configure your audio in XSplit Broadcaster, and the most notable audio feature has to be the multi track audio for those who’ll be editing their footage and would want separate audio tracks. Multi-track audio is most helpful when after streaming your game and you’d want to edit the footage and omit/edit/enhance the audio – you’ll be able to edit accordingly without the hassle of combined recordings.

This is also beneficial for content creators who listen to their music players during game plays and would want to re-upload these on other social platforms. This will surely aid in avoiding capturing or omitting copyrighted music on your video. Speaking of editing your footage and uploading on socials, nobody has time to watch 4-hour long gameplay – you might want to edit the game highlights and post this monumental gameplay instead.

From here, you’re pretty much set to start recording and broadcasting your gameplay. After the session, we’ll talk more on how to get your game highlights as fast and easy as possible.

So, you’re done with your game broadcast (taking note that you also have this on local recording file) and it took you more than 4-hours before ending a game stage. It was an awesome game and you’d like to highlight the parts where you made the winning move! Nobody has time to watch all 4-hours, here’s where we teach you on the easy and least tedious way of editing your highlight reel.

Edit game highlights for socials

Our newly-released XSplit Express Video Editor is perfect for this! Its main benefit is allowing many content creators to easily edit and upload game/stream highlight reels faster than most complicated video editing software used today.

Here’s a short clip on how you can use the XSplit Express Video Editor in creating your highlight reels:

If you have other questions about the XSplit Express Video Editor, you can check out our blogs, search for FAQs or chat with our 24/7 customer support.

Get to Know Our Discord Moderator, Nyx!

Since opening our official XSplit Discord server, Nyx has been a standout member with knowledge of not only XSplit products but also tech in general surrounding streaming and technical PC know-how. It really didn’t take long before she was promoted as a moderator with the responsibilities of helping us out in responding to members and keeping the various channels in order.

Get to know more about her with this interview.

Tell us a little about yourself, your favorite games, your background and what you’re up to?

Nyx: Hi, My name is Thea Nyx Petersen but I’m more known as Nyx. My background is in IT, and I have a big passion for the tech industry as a whole, I’ve been gaming for as long I can remember with my first game being Giana Sisters on the Commodore 64. I mostly prefer RPG’s and platformers ranging from Crash and Spyro to World of Warcraft, Guildwars2, or classic offline RPG’s. Right now I’m still setting stuff up to get back into a consistent streaming schedule.

When and how did you first stumble upon XSplit and how long have you been using it?

Nyx: I actually stumbled upon XSplit quite a few years ago right after I had started trying out streaming. Back when I first used it, I was very inexperienced when it came to the streaming scene, but the thing that immediately hit me with XSplit was how the stream looked a lot more out of the box, that I liked!

What makes you use XSplit over other streaming applications? What are your favorite features?

Nyx: I’ve tried almost every streaming application on the market ( some that don’t exist anymore ) and I always fell back on XSplit for 2 reasons.

The first is the chroma key tool makes my life so much easier! Secondly I like the aspect that I’m not bound to my stream settings, I can easily stream at 720p and do a 1440p recording at 2 different frame rates at the same time, might not be what most need but it makes me happy to know I can produce a local recording that’s completely unbound by my stream settings.

What do you think is the most interesting part about the video creation and streaming community?

Nyx: See this is where my approach is probably a bit unique, I’m not very good at editing or stuff like that, however, my time in the streaming scene I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist, which has caused me to get very familiar with x264 as a whole, which has also allowed me to tweak my encodes to a point where I personally am much happier with the raw quality of my streams. It’s been 4 years and I still regularly come up with new ways to improve, I guess part of it is the excitement of a challenge and being able to see the work pay off immediately.

What do you find most rewarding and most difficult about being a moderator on the XSplit Discord server?

Nyx: I think that a lot of people have come to rely on me for technical advice when it comes to the streaming scene, I’m always happy to share my knowledge, I could probably preach to the end of the world about the more technical aspects of encoding. I also find it super rewarding when I manage to teach people new stuff, especially when they come back to let me know the information I gave helped their streams.

But also I’d like people to be aware that I’m not flawless, I’ve been tinkering with this stuff for years, so it doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes. I sometimes worry that when I say stuff that doesn’t apply to everyone that people reading through will be taking that for themselves giving them a worse end result instead of them reaching out asking if X applies to their setup as well.

For anyone reading this, let them know where they can find you; social pages, YouTube and streaming channels?

Nyx: Heh, I’m usually horrible at managing social media but the two main destinations to find me would be my personal discord or my Twitch channel. I sometimes manage to update my twitter but it’s not as often as I should, the channels are linked below:

And that’s it! If you haven’t still, join our Discord server and interact with fellow content creators and gamers! We also have some exclusive insider stuff that you surely don’t want to miss out.

Looking forward to seeing you inside! 🙂

XSplit Features You Need to Try

XSplit suite of software has a lot of features that, we believe, those content creators should try. XSplit is known to provide a diverse range of software suited for individuals who produce live-stream broadcasts and recorded content. Aside from providing the best recording and broadcasting software, it also provides a 24/7 multi-lingual customer interaction center to assist customers and inquiries at any time of the day.

Aside from the usual recording and streaming functionalities, we bet you haven’t really delved into the features embedded in XSplit’s Broadcaster. Here are some of the features that you might not have known, or might have known but haven’t had the time to try.

Do more with sources

Add more than just gameplay, webcam video, graphics overlay, and widgets to your presentation with sources – managing your scene is easy with the copy-paste feature for sources, no need to add the same item repeatedly on different scenes as you can easily copy and paste these directly. Add more sources through the Plugin Store, more tips and tricks are listed here.

  • Whiteboard source
    To use: Add sources > General widgets > Whiteboard > Right-click on the presentation to view the settings. Here’s a dedicated tutorial for more details.
  • Text scripts
    To use: Add source > Text > Check custom script > Click edit script to create your own script using the blank template or use the premade ones. You may also opt to use a script from a local text file or remote URL. Learn more about texts here. Did you know that you can also add a running duration timer for your streams? From the custom script – edit script setting, choose the General Purpose Clock template, and set the mode to duration – you’re all set!
  • 360 Projection
    To use: Right-click your added image or video source on the scene, select the layout tab, and tick the 360 projection to play around with making the image or video into a 3D visual. You can visualize better here at 1:15.
  • Copy and paste source
    Another option if you’re in a hurry to add an element to the scene but can’t remember which folder it’s in? Then this gem is for you. Click to select the source that you want to copy > click copy > go to the new scene > and click paste. It usually gives you two choices of whether you want to paste the source as is or as a linked source; that’s entirely up to you.

Extensions

Per scene audio extension
The per scene audio extension allows you to set the audio levels for system sound and microphone on each scene. If you’re having issues managing audios between scenes, then the per scene audio extension is what you need.

After playing around with these features, you might have an idea for your ideal scene presentations. You would want to save and share this in a file for easy loading and cloud share. Or if you’re a streamer with multiple streaming stations then this next feature can be proven useful.

The Presentation packager can be a real life-saver for days where you don’t know if you need a backup of your stream.

Viewer count feature

To use: Go to Tools > Settings > General > Check or uncheck the box where it says “Hide viewer count in-stream status.

Direct upload feature

After recording your stream, you might want to upload it directly to your social accounts. XSplit has made uploading your recordings to socials with a click of the button.

From the File menu, go to your recordings and select the recording that you want to upload. Thereafter, click on the social platform you’ll upload the video on. At the moment, this feature is available for YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Let us know which ones you’ve tried before and how these features made your stream better. Don’t forget to send us your feedback through our socials and official Discord server.

How to make a lot of money on Twitch

Monetization – one of the primary reasons why people get into streaming in the first place. That’s the dream, after all, isn’t it? Being able to do something you love while making some money on the side is something a lot of streamers aspire for. But what does it take to get there?

You’re spoiled for choice when it comes to where to stream your content, but since Twitch is one of the bigger platforms right now, so let’s start there. After getting your stream setup ready and finding your audience and your voice, there are a number of ways you can make money as a Twitch streamer. Let’s go over some of the most popular ones, starting with the most basic ones and going into some that are a little more creative.

1. Twitch Donations

Donations are what they sound like – some money your viewers decide to give you, usually in exchange for an animated alert or a shout out. You can set this up via PayPal or any other payment method. With a third party service like Player.me, you can set up alerts and donation trackers to gamify your donation goals. Make it easy for your audience to give you some love by setting up a donation button on your Twitch page.

2. Being a Twitch Affiliate

To become a Twitch Affiliate, you’re going to have to satisfy a few criteria first.

  • 500 minutes or more of stream time in the last 30 days
  • An average of 3 or more simultaneous viewers in the last 30 days
  • Have at least 50 followers
  • Broadcast 7 unique days in the last 30 days

Sure it sounds simple enough, but it takes quite a bit of dedication and you’ll have to stand out in a sea of your fellow streamers all vying for that precious Affiliate status. Here’s what you get with the Affiliate status:

  • The Subscribe button becomes available for your viewers. A new affiliate can make up to 50% of each subscription cost.
  • You can be given Bits. Bits are essentially a virtual currency that your viewers can buy and give out to their favorite streamers. Twitch pays you $0.01 per Bit you’re given.
  • You can make money off any game sales done through your stream, like an affiliate program. So if you’ve got a good following, might be a good idea to play a highly sought after game. Affiliates earn a 5% commission off every sale.

3. Being a Twitch Partner

A Twitch Partner is like a Super Saiyan version of a Twitch Affiliate, meaning you get all the perks for being an Affiliate alongside some special perks.

To become a Twitch Partner, you’ll need to satisfy the following criteria:

  • Stream for at least 25 hours in the last 30 days
  • Broadcast 12 unique days in the last 30 days
  • Have an average 75 viewers for the last 30 days

Besides getting everything an Affiliate gets, Partners get access to ads. As a Partner, you have control of the frequency of displaying the ads. You’d get paid a flat rate for every 1,000 impressions.

Be careful about putting out too many ads, though, because your viewers might not like that too much.

4. Sponsorships

When you get popular enough, you have the opportunity to use your infamy to get brands to notice you. Popular streamers can become very good brand ambassadors, especially if your followers share a lot of overlap with the target demographics of some brands.

Twitch allows sponsored content. Just make sure you’re honest with your viewers that they’re watching a sponsored stream – it’s good to keep a good relationship with your community.

5. Patreon

You can customize your Twitch page to include all kinds of links and content. You can put in all your sponsorships, links to your social media, or even your website if you have one. That’s the perfect place for you to link to your Patreon.

A Patreon page is essentially another way for your viewers to support you. They can pick from different tiers with corresponding rewards. Make sure to make it worthwhile for your Patreon supporters by offering exclusive content, which can range anywhere from special bonus footage from your streams to exclusive streams just for them. Make them feel special!

And there you have it – 5 income sources from being a Twitch streamer. Just remember – it takes charisma, charm, talent, and dedication. Good luck and happy streaming!